“You’re not listening to me, douche bag,” said the driver.
Jesus, where’d Christensen meet this guy? His head was the size of a cinder block and he had a lumpy scar that started in the corner of his left eye and ran down to his neck. The gun was like a toy in his big meaty hand. A bone-snapper with a rock for a heart. Born scary. Unless he was an actor. That was also a possibility. The city was full of them, all colors and sizes. He met a few when Heather took an acting class in the Village. Losers, every one. Broke, delusional, dedicated to their art, and destined for oblivion. He used to take them out to dinner, ten at a time. Fucking babies. They ate like Teamsters. Did anything to pay the rent. This guy probably did children’s theater in Brooklyn on the weekends, playing ogres and talking trees. He was good, though, really good. There was an emptiness about him, something missing, like a soul.
“Look, man—”
The driver cracked him across the forehead with the barrel of the gun. Blood gushed into his eyes and down the front of his suit. Dazed, in pain, he put his cuffed hands to his head. They came away slippery and warm.
“Oh... shit... what the fuck...”
“Am I getting through to you, now, asshole?”
“Christensen...” The blood kept coming.
“What?”
“Practical joke...” His white shirt wasn’t white anymore.
“A joke? You think this is a joke?” The driver coughed up an ugly laugh. “Trust me, motherfucker, this ain’t no joke. You made somebody very unhappy. Now you just lie there and bleed quietly.”
Back into the traffic, his head throbbing. Who was unhappy? Who was this fucking unhappy? He had pissed off some people over the years, but who hadn’t? Business was business. He’d been beat a few times himself. You suck it up and move on. You learn from your mistakes and let it go. You scream a little, maybe a lot, maybe you even make some threats. But that’s it. You take the hit. And you try not to get beat again. There was always more money to be made. Nobody got rough. Not really. He’d heard stories, but he figured they were just that, stories. Christ, the blood wouldn’t stop. He went back over his side deals — no way this was company business — from the last couple of years. What about that Australian, Elliott? He was a hothead, for sure. But if he was going to get crazy he’d do it himself, in person, no hired help. The South Africans? The Koreans? The Russians? All had reasons to be unhappy, all had threatened him in some way. But it was mostly bullshit about going to the SEC. It had to be the Russians. They lost the most. They were the scariest. But the driver wasn’t Russian. Wouldn’t they use one of their own people? It was hard to think, his head hurt like hell. If he could just think it through, he could figure this thing out. He could fix it, he knew he could, if he could just get to his office, get out of this goddamn car and get to his office, make a few calls, talk to people, say the right things. He had to make a deal with the driver. That was the first step. There was $25,000 in cash in the safe in the apartment.
“Listen to me, I can pay you. Ten thousand. Cash.”
“You’re some piece of work, you are,” the driver said.
“I know what this is about. I know who you’re working for. There’s been a misunderstanding. I can fix it, but I have to make some calls. I have to get out of this car. I’ll pay you.”
“You think you can fix this? You can’t fix this. This is unfixable.”
“Where are you taking me? Who are we meeting?”
“Your maker.”
“Twenty thousand. Cash. It’s in my apartment. On the East Side.”
“Thanks for the raise. Now shut the fuck up.”
“Twenty-five thousand. All yours. The Russians will never know.”
“What Russians? What are you talking about? And why are you talking at all?”
The driver turned up the radio as loud as it would go, reached back, pressed the gun against his knee, and pulled the trigger. It was like being hit with a sledge hammer and stabbed at the same time. He screamed and the driver screamed with him. The people in the car next to them looked over and saw the driver screaming. Just another crazy New Yorker.
“Everybody’s always talking about the Russians,” the driver said. “I don’t get it.”
Pain now. And the back of the driver’s head and the radio voices and the great steel towers of the George Washington Bridge and his bloody suit and the handcuffs and the back of the driver’s head and his eyes closed and the car moving faster and his knee with the bones shattered and on fire and the car moving faster and a little dream about the river and then moonlight and then, yes, just a little better. Okay, the driver didn’t want to hear it. But he was just the driver. There was bound to be another guy. There was always another guy, the guy who was really in charge. That was the guy he had to think about it. He was a serious guy, obviously hardcore. It wouldn’t be easy and it wouldn’t be cheap. All right, fine, whatever it takes. He could have it all. Yes, that was it. Give him everything. The Caribbean accounts, the Florida house, all of it. What the hell? Why not? He’d make it all back again eventually. And more. No way the guy turns down a deal like that. Four million total, maybe more. Not the most money in the world, but enough, a nice pile. The knee was bad, but he could live with it. Get a new one. Titanium. No problem. He’d be back on the tennis court in a few months.
They drove up the Palisades Parkway a few miles to a defunct rest area, its entrance blocked by a chain strung between two posts. The driver bumped over the curb and went around the post on the right. A hundred yards in was a small parking lot that overlooked the Hudson. There was a low wooden guardrail and ten yards beyond it was the edge of a cliff. Beyond the cliff there was nothing, just a 350-foot fall to the rocks. The guardrail had a gap where one of the crossbeams had been cut out. The driver stopped the car in front of the gap. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped down the steering wheel, the gear shift, and the front eat.
“Is your boss here?”
“He’ll be here in a minute,” the driver said.
“Good, I need to talk to him. We’re going to straighten this whole thing out.”
“Glad to hear it. Now sit back and relax.”
To keep the car straight, the driver rigged a piece of rope between the steering wheel and the brake pedal. He used a chunk of stone for the gas pedal and it all worked just like it was supposed to.
Part II
Uptown
The quant
by Richard Aleas
Times Square
It was night, and the trading floor outside Michael Steinbach’s office was empty. The TV screens suspended from the ceiling, which had been playing CNN and CNBC nonstop throughout the day, were turned off. But around the perimeter of the floor, from behind closed doors, you could still hear the rapid patter of keyboards in use. Traders keep trading hours; hackers keep hacking hours.
Steinbach himself was a hacker, though he’d been known to put on the occasional position himself, just to show he still knew how. He’d written the original trading system the company used and devised the first of the company’s quantitative trading strategies, a pairs-trading algorithm that looked for mispricings across global equity markets. Arbitrage opportunities were few, small, and short-lived — but with a powerful enough set of computers hunting for them, you could make a business out of exploiting the handful you could find.
And a business is what Michael Steinbach made. Starting with a few million dollars from a single large investor, he parlayed his original pairs-trading strategy into a billion-dollar fund with a dozen different strategies and a staff of nearly one hundred. Each year, the company’s Human Resources team identified the top graduates in math and computer science from the country’s best universities with the same single-minded efficiency his computers used in locating trading opportunities on the world’s securities markets. Each year, the firm interviewed several hundred prospective employees; each year, the firm made zero, one, or two offers — no more — to join their quantitative research staff. A job as a quant at Quilibrium Investment Partners, L.L.C. was a prize not easily won, nor lightly cast aside.